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TIL in 1984 An automatic weapon was fired from the Libyan embassy in London, injuring 11 and killing a British policewoman. However, the killer enjoyed diplomatic immunity. Because the killer was never brought to justice the UK later allowed the USA to bomb Libya from American bases in the UK.

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69VYm TIL People had known about planet Mercury since ancient times, but Samuel Schwabe wanted to see if there were any other planets even closer to the Sun than Mercury. He tried his best to discover a new planet between 1826 and 1843 but noticed sunspot cycles instead
yVNVX TIL The dwarf planet Haumea, which orbits in the Kuiper Belt out beyond Neptune, is already unusual. It has a strange elongated shape, two moons and a day that lasts only 4 hours, making it the fastest-spinning large object in the solar system.
R79pa TIL The American boardgame "Chutes and Ladders" is a bastardization of an ancient Indian game called Moksha Patam. The game's original theming represented the Hindu soul's arduous path to liberation from the cycle of reincarnation and has been played by the same ruleset for nearly 2,000 years.
78EvP TIL Paul McCartney dreamed the melody for "Yesterday" one night and composed the music the next morning. He spent a month afterward checking to make sure he hadn't subconsciously copied it from someone else.
WvnX TIL that in the original draft of the Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson had wrote,“We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable.” It was Benjamin Franklin who changed “sacred” to “self-evident” to champion rationality as opposed to religious providence